What The Ideal Length Of Everything Online?

What The Ideal Length Of Everything Online?

Have You wondered if anyone is paying attention to how long our post should be on the social media platforms? I mean are we talking to much or not enough?

I'm going to give you some guidance and the fun will be in monitoring your own results. You will win with the guidance provided here.

Going to the source of twitter, the recommendation is keeping your tweets to 100 characters. Twitter says that tweets under 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate.

Facebook the ideal length is 40-80 characters is the recommended ideal. This seems very short but less is more, right? Questions on a facebook post get more engagement. That is actually a psychological truth. You have asked a question holding your viewer hostage. The truth is no matter how silly the question is people want to feel they have the answer! Questions engage your viewer at first sight. They may want to leave but they at the least have to see what others have said.

Google Plus has a new lay out. Keep it to 60 Characters and to one line. The trick here is to write a first compelling sentence that will be visible in the post. Personally I find 40-60 characters tough but using questions seems to help me shorten my titles.

Blogging post are differently entirely as far as engagement. Once you get the viewers attention the time frame that he/she will remain on your post has been researched to being about 7 minutes! It reminds me what my social study teacher told our class before we were to write a term paper. Here it is in his words:

"Tell 'em what your going to tell 'em"

then

"Tell 'em"

then

"Tell 'em what you just told 'em"

To me that was a great way of staying focused and keeping it short and direct. That sage advise seems to hold true on our social media platforms.


A 7 min read comes in around 1,600 words.

The above chart covers a few ideas I didn't mention. We all know people have short attention span when it comes to consuming information. There is a psychology to that as well. Its compared to "lifting weights". A person's mind will take so much in and tire of the consumption and walk away. As presenters of information with a guideline of limitation on the information, it sure makes us clarify what it is we want to say.

One final word, don't worry if you go over. In fact if your going to tweet you can tweet a long version and tweet a short version and watch your results. 

To Your Success!

Michelle Masterson
about.me/thecoffeehutdepot